Brands
The Belgian Waffle Co drills down on National Waffle Day
MUMBAI: The Belgian Waffle Co turned up the heat this National Waffle Day with a record-breaking 7 lakh footfalls across 660+ outlets in 220 cities on 16 July, flipping a midweek lull into a full-blown dessert riot.
Led by the cheeky and energetic #WhatsYourDrill campaign, the brand teased fans with a faux cancellation of National Waffle Day—only to unveil a surprise date shift to the third Wednesday of July. Cue chaos, curiosity, and meme mayhem.
The buzz peaked as “Waffle Lieutenants” (read: die-hard fans) received retro-style mission letters and classified 3D-glasses-included invites, decoding the secret celebration date. Influencer-led content exploded on Instagram, led by viral creator ShettyBrother whose “waffle drill” clip clocked 6 million organic views.
With waffles priced at Rs100 for the day, the brand saw queues snaking out of stores, powered by a slick tech solution allowing pre-orders to manage the sugar rush. OOH ads across 77+ locations in metros and Tier-2 cities added to the visibility blitz, while store-level games like “Waffle Mania” kept fans entertained.
Even employees got in on the action, posting “Cadet Profiles” and their own waffle rituals on LinkedIn, proving that behind every great drill, there’s an even crunchier team.
“National Waffle Day is always a landmark moment for The Belgian Waffle Co. This year, as we celebrate 10 incredible years of the brand, it held even greater significance for us. The massive response across our 660+ stores country-wide reflected not just the growing love for our waffles, but also the enthusiasm with which our customers embraced the idea of celebrating rituals and indulgence in a way that felt uniquely personal. It’s a celebration of our loyal community, our partners, and the culture we’ve built together. This massive success year-after-year is humbling and encourages us to remain committed to product quality, consistency and customer delight,” said The Belgian Waffle Co Executive Director and CEO, Ankit Patel.
“This year, we repositioned the National Waffle Day to the third Wednesday of July, shifting away from a fixed day which our consumers were quite aware about. The overwhelming response to that shift is a testament to the strong emotional connect the brand shares with our community. With the #WhatsYourDrill campaign, we wanted to give our community a platform to express themselves in fun, meaningful ways, to build a movement around rituals and shared joy. From user-generated content to on-ground engagement, the enthusiasm we witnessed reaffirmed our belief in creating experiences that go beyond the product and connect emotionally with our audience,” shared marketing head Vrushali Parab.
Crunch met creativity, and National Waffle Day 2025 signed off with syrupy smiles and a sugar high that hit just right.
Brands
Samsung certifies 1,000 Maharashtra students in AI and coding
The South Korean electronics giant marks its first large-scale skilling push in the state, with women making up nearly half the national programme’s enrolment
PUNE: Samsung has put 1,000 students in Maharashtra through a certified training programme in artificial intelligence and coding, the largest such drive the South Korean electronics company has run in the state and a signal that corporate India’s skilling ambitions are moving well beyond the boardroom brochure.
The certifications were awarded under Samsung Innovation Campus (SIC), the company’s flagship corporate social responsibility programme, which launched in India in 2022 with the stated aim of democratising access to future-technology education. The 1,000 graduates were drawn from four institutions: 127 from Savitribai Phule Pune University, 373 from Pimpri Chinchwad University, 250 from D.Y. Patil University’s Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology and 250 from Anjuman-I-Islam’s Kalsekar Technical Campus. All completed training in either AI or coding and programming, the two disciplines Samsung has identified as the critical pillars of the digital economy.
The programme does not stop at technical training. Soft-skills development and career-readiness modules are baked into the curriculum, a deliberate attempt to close the gap between what universities teach and what employers actually want.
“India’s digital growth story will ultimately be shaped by the quality of its talent pipeline,” said Shubham Mukherjee, head of CSR and corporate communications at Samsung Southwest Asia. “As technologies like AI move from the periphery to the core of industries, skilling must evolve from basic training to building real-world capability. This milestone in Maharashtra reflects how industry and academia can come together to create a future-ready workforce that is both globally competitive and locally relevant.”
The Maharashtra drive sits within a rapidly scaling national effort. Samsung Innovation Campus trained 20,000 young people across India in 2025, hitting its stated target for the year. Women account for 48 per cent of national enrolments, a figure the company cites as evidence of its push for an inclusive technology ecosystem. The programme is implemented in partnership with the Electronics Sector Skills Council of India and the Telecom Sector Skill Council.
Samsung, which is marking 30 years in India this year, runs SIC alongside two other initiatives, Samsung Solve for Tomorrow and Samsung DOST, as part of a broader effort to build what it calls a generation of innovators with both the technical depth and the problem-solving mindset to thrive in a fast-moving digital world.
A thousand certified students is a tidy headline. Whether they find jobs that match their new skills is the harder question, and the one that will ultimately determine whether corporate skilling programmes like this one are genuine pipelines or well-photographed gestures.
